Gratitude
by BlueberryNails
Summary: He thanks her five times


_Disclaimer: All rights to Kishi. I just wrote this damn fic because I am avoiding doing some school work._

* * *

**He thanks her five times.**

* * *

_You...are so annoying._

And something akin to a kunai pressing into her lungs, threatening to burst it like a bubble erupted in her chest. She's lost and hurt, staring at his spiky, ebony locks that rustled in the cool December air. She was captivated by the way the silver moonlight bounced off of it.

He was a few steps away from the gate; a few steps away from shattering her beyond repair. She begs him to stay, begs him to not leave her. He must care about her, even if not in the way that she had clamored for years. Just a tiny bit in him that wasn't bitter and cold and broken.

And yet her distraught voice and trembling shoulders do not faze him. He does not even look back. He shifts only when she threatens to scream. A movement so fast that her teary eyes did not even see it until she felt his warm breath behind her neck.

_Sakura...thank you._

A sharp pain, and everything goes black.

* * *

She's exhausted, way past her limit. She'll die if she continues, even with the seal on her forehead. But it was time for her to prove herself. She had been training for five years for this moment: to prove that she is a perfectly capable kunoichi who could stand next to her teammates.

So she pushes herself. A portal opens to an acid dimension, and she shields Obito from the sickly green liquid. She can't find the strength to stop the cry that tore from her lips. It burns more than anything that she had felt. The pain was excruciating, her skin bubbling up into blood. But she will not take the time to heal herself for she will not have enough chakra to give.

Obito tells her to rest, but there is no time. She trusted Naruto, but Kaguya would certainly realize that he was just a mere distraction for them to save Sasuke. They would never have this chance again.

One more time she gives Obito chakra, sweat dotting her eyebrow, and the portal opens to him.

_Sasuke-kun!_

She screams out to him. _Faster._ And the portal is closing in but he is not even halfway there, so with all her remaining strength gathers her chakra into the palm of her hands and pushes them onto Obito's shoulders. Its force would have made him flat if it weren't for his concentration on keeping the portal open. It widens that Sakura could see his legs again, sprinting towards them.

Then all at once the portal closes again, and this time her chakra levels are dangerously low. She cannot anymore, and when his face disappears she is filled with self loathing.

She could not save him. She has failed.

I'm sorry Naruto. I am so sorry.

Tsunade-shishou, despite your help, I could never be of use.

Sasuke-kun, please stay alive. We'll find a way. I promise you that.

Her body feels like lead and her knees give way. She sways to the side; exhausted wasn't even a word to describe how she felt. She could barely see, unable to summon the energy to care that she was going to hit the rocky ground—

Someone caught her from falling. Obito, she first thinks, but she meets a different set of red eyes. Its pattern akin to a six pointed star.

How? He explains. She listens half heartedly, because all she can feel was pure, unadulterated happiness.

_Thanks to you, I made it._

* * *

She growled at Naruto when he saunters into the room, screaming for Sasuke. He cowers at the sight of her clenched fists—she likes how even if its been three years since the war, he was still trembling in fear of her punches.

She yells at him to get out because Sasuke was still in a bad condition to take any visitors from their last mission. It was an A rank mission, and Sasuke had been the one to take the most hits from the missing-nin of Rain Country with an amazing bloodline limit that could torture anyone by controlling their bodies through the blood in their veins.

He was nearly killed before Sakura had come to his rescue, easily killing the preoccupied missing-nin with her bare hands. However, his body was mangled and bent in ways that would haunt her dreams and Sakura had to heal him on the spot because his heartbeat was so faint. She fainted from chakra exhaustion when she had finally managed to align all his joints.

The blonde pouted before he walked back out the room, closing the door behind him.

The kunoichi turned her attention to her unconscious patient. She continued to check his health. When she finished jotting down his results, she turned on her heel and walked towards the door—

_Sakura._

It was a garbled word, but she recognized it. She turned her head to see Sasuke trying to sit up. She berates him and he grudgingly lies back down.

He asks what happened, because all he could remember was so much pain. Sakura was disappointed—she would have liked it if he remembered her swooping in and saving the day. Then again, if he did he would have just been annoyed at her for hurting his pride.

Tch. Men.

When she finishes, he stares at her in silence. His eyes were unreadable again, before they soften at her, making her heart race without a second to waste.

_Thank you, Sakura. For saving me._

* * *

She pulled away from his lips, eyes wet with tears. _You asshole_, she screams, _how many times do you have to play with my feelings?_

She's had enough. She was putting her foot down after twenty three years of being irrevocably in love with Sasuke—she wasn't having his shit anymore.

He stands still, hands that were on either side of her face moments ago were hanging dejectedly by his sides. His face was stoic, and yet Sakura could see through it. He was confused, pissed, and most importantly, hurt. She ignored it.

For so long, they had kept whatever the hell this was going on between them from everyone.

It wasn't fair. Not to her. She knew so much about him now. He had shown her his vulnerable side already, shown her what he feared and hated. How hard he sniffed whenever he cried over his clan, how angry he could get whenever she entertained a man's attention, how her name tasted like when he was on the precipice of pleasure, how he comforts her in public by lacing their pinky fingers together—all the little things.

She knew them by heart already, so why did he keep pushing her away?

Sasuke, being Sasuke, was making what should be simple enough very much complicated.

She tells him to leave her alone, and this time she means it. She turns around, seething and shattered.

_I don't ever mean to hurt you_, he says softly. Inner Sakura tells herself to ignore his words because then she wouldn't be able to walk away anymore. But she listens, because she is a fool.

_Don't leave. Please._

_I can't, Sasuke. I can't handle being yours in the night, then nothing when morning comes._

_Then be mine forever._

Her breath lodges into her throat. Warmth embraced her, his strong muscular arms wrapping around her body, trapping her.

_Marry me._

It took a while, because could she really handle Sasuke? Could she handle handing her heart and soul to him forever and be bound to him til death?

She was unsure of herself, but Sasuke's warmth was a promise to her. A promise that he would keep her safe and happy til the end of days.

When they tell everyone about their engagement, they simply say that it was about time because they were in no way fooling anyone since the very start.

She meets Sasuke's eyes with embarrassment, and he reaches out to her, entwining their fingers together. Then, he leans towards her, and Sakura thinks he's going to kiss her in front of everyone—_oh my god is he really going to_—but his lips brushes against the outer shell of her ear.

_Thank you for loving me._

* * *

Sakura was trembling. Badly. Naruto told her to take a seat first, but she does not hear him.

Itachi peered up at her. He asks her if she was crying.

And Sakura looks at the seven year old, and she feels her heart break. He looks so much like his father.

How will she tell him?

_Iie, Itachi_, she croaks. Sakura managed a wobbly smile, but she knows it won't fool her son. He has her brains, after all.

The child's green eyes were scared, and he buried his face into her belly. _Don't cry, kaasan. Otosan will live._

And she lets out a strangled cry, because his past ANBU missions didn't end in having his heart nearly fall out of his broken chest.

Naruto clenched his hands next to her. _Never should have trusted him with that mission_, she hears him say. She cannot comfort him. She couldn't even comfort herself.

When a young medic says that they can go see him, she only meant family, but no one had the gall to stop the legendary orange Hokage. Sakura usually had, but she didn't stop him.

This may be the last time they'd get to speak to him.

He's bandaged, bruised, and barely recognizable. Talking must have hurt, but he manages. Sakura thinks that he knew that it would be his last.

He banters with Naruto, and Naruto, despite the tears, argued like there was no tomorrow. There was no tomorrow.

He gives Sakura warm words and a kiss so painful she felt like it was her whose chest was crushed.

He turns to Itachi—sweet loving Itachi with his father's dark hair and handsome looks and her mother's green eyes and (it only showed when he's annoyed) feisty personality.

He tells him the story behind his name. Itachi cries, and Sasuke's face grimaces because of the pain.

His facade lay broken on his lap when his tears fell. He makes Naruto promise to step in as father figure, and if his son became a Naruto, he would kill him. Naruto argues that he wouldn't be able to do that, because Sasuke wasn't going anywhere. The dark haired man didn't say anything about that.

He tells Sakura to be strong and to raise their son the best she can. Tears fall relentlessly, but she doesn't make a sound and merely nods.

To Itachi, he tells him to protect his mother at all costs. The child begged him to live.

He coughs, and his time is up when blood dribbled from his lips. He says there was so much more he wanted to say, but it was no use.

He calls Naruto a dobe, and tells him that he was honored to be his friend and that he never held him against the fact that he had beaten him in their inevitable fight. He apologizes for the past, for the things he did when they were teenagers, which felt like a lifetime ago.

He apologizes to Sakura too. _I've never loved a woman other than you,_ he confesses. She smirks ruefully and says she knows, because she was the only one to look past his frigid and constipated face. He cracks a slight smile.

His gaze rested on Itachi, and merely kisses his forehead and presses their foreheads together.

_Thank you Naruto, Sakura, Itachi. For everything._

A sharp pain, and everything goes black.


End file.
